Photographs of the USS New York (above) and christening (below) by Bill Haber/AP Yesterday, a christening ceremony was held in a Louisiana for the latest naval ship bearing the name USS New York. While there have been five other ships with the same name, this "amphibious transport dock ship" was named to honor the state after September 11. In 2002, Governor Pataki asked then Secretary of the Navy (now Deputy Secretary of Defense) Gordon......

Some new details from the ME's office about slain realtor to the stars Linda Stein. Toxicology tests on Stein, who was brutally bludgeoned to death in her Fifth Avenue apartment in October, show that there were "no traces of marijuana in her system," according to the NY Post. Stein's assistant, Natavia Lowery, has been accused of murdering her employer. At the time of her arrest, police had said Lowery snapped after Stein verbally abused her......

The Pentagon has charged six men accused of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks and will seek the death penalty (the Pentagon's terse press release was titled "Defense Department Seeks Death Penalty for Six Guantanamo Bay Detainees"). These would be "the first trials under the terrorism-era military tribunal system." The defendants will see the evidence and will have similar rights as U.S. soldiers accused of crimes. As for whether evidence and confessions gained through methods,......

Two teen-aged males were arrested on Long Island yesterday after a notebook was found that described their desire to plan a Columbine-like attack on their high school. It's hard to determine whether to take this incident seriously, as the younger half of the hapless pair left a notebook containing their terror blueprints in a McDonalds parking lot, where it was found by someone who turned it over to police. 17-year-old Michael McDonough was the older......

Reuters has a sad story today about a young Staten Island man named Osama Al-Najjar. He now goes by "Sammy," but insists that family members still call him Osama in private. His given name was relatively innocuous until 2001, when it became shorthand for the infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden. After being taunted as "bin Laden" and "terrorist" at his high school, Al-Najjar attempted suicide twice in one day via pills and hanging. Upon entering......

Last night, parents of students who attend public schools at 345 Dean Street in Brooklyn convened for an emergency meeting with the Department of Education. The emergency was the fact that the DOE wants to move an Arabic-themed specialized school, named after the poet Khalil Gibran, into the building. Parents generally stuck to arguing that another school would overcrowd the school. The Post quoted Janet Filemyr, whose child attends sixth grade at the Math and......

Time announced its second Time 100 list of influential people. (For whatever reason, Time doesn't provide a full list with separate links to all the influentials, so here's a list from FishbowlNY.) Based on our reading, the New Yorkers (and we're including some people who live in Westchester, but work in the city) who made the list include 30 Rock's Tina Fey, subway superhero Wesley Autrey, Senator Hillary Clinton, banker Stephen Schwartzman, director Martin Scorsese,......

Playwright Adam Rapp etches elegantly bleak portraits of America’s young lost souls; his Red Light Winter was an Obie-winner and Pulitzer-prize finalist, Blackbird was recently adapted into a film which Rapp also directed. (He wrote and directed his first feature, Winter Passing, which starred Ed Harris, Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell.) Rapp’s published seven novels, plays in a band, and is not someone you’d want to play one-on-one basketball with to settle a bet. His......

The NY Times has a good article about the second trial of Steven Johnson, who unleashed his anger by shooting people and taking others hostage in an East Village bar almost five years ago. Johnson, who has AIDS, was unemployed at the time and was allegedly looking for "happy people" to "avenge the oppression of black people like himself," according the Times. We remember the incident very clearly. It was a nice June night and......

Residents in NY and Pennsylvania breathed a huge sigh of relief when Ralph "Bucky" Phillips surrendered to police last night. Phillips is wanted in the shootings of three state troopers - one of whom died from his injuries - during his many months on the lam after breaking out of an Eric County jail. Phillips had been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list (the NY Times noted, "just three names down from......

Yesterday, the NYPD's counterterrorism head Richard Falkenrath said that the city is still viewed as "a prime target for another terrorist strike." The AP reports that Falkenrath was briefing security executives in prepartion for the UN General Assembly. And what do you know, a Al Jazeera airs a tape of Osama bin Laden and some September 11 hijackers (well, supposedly September 11 hijackers - their faces are masked). While the President sought to point out......

- Streetsblog notes how the NYPD parking abuse scandal gets crazier as one cop harasses a CBS 2 reporter and as one Chinatown businessman is arrested for photographing illegaly parked cars - Something all three candidates for Governor can agree on: SUNY and CUNY should not be merged - Horrible story: A woman abandoned her three year old child in Chinatown, after an argument with her husband - bitter divorce or no bitter divorce,......

Michelle Goldberg, Brooklyn resident and senior political reporter for Salon.com, recently published her first book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a detailed examination of the rise of Christian Nationalism. Her research took her outside the largely secular NYC, and even further afield from the liberal ideology of which New Yorkers have grown so accustomed. In her book, Goldberg details the actions and intentions of the Christian right and presents a clear picture of......

Oh man, when was the last time we had a good artistic freedom vs. religion controversy? Hmm... maybe the Black Virgin Mary covered in poo back in 2000-- which itself was nothing compared to Serrano's Piss Christ back in 1989. Well, here's a new one! CBS reports on the National Black Fine Arts Show at the Puck Building: But the writer had big problems with a painting by Harlem artist "Tafa". It depicts an......

A.J. Daulerio, Oddjack...

Great! Just in time for Halloween, when folks are supposed to be spooked, and our Presidential elections, when folks will be thrown into self-induced hysteria, Osama bin Laden has released a new video tape. The AP's lede: Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), reading a statement to the American people in a new videotape aired Friday, directly admitted for the first time that he ordered the Sept. 11 attacks and said "the best way......

Sam Seder, Director / Writer / Comedian / Co-Host, "The Majority Report"...

Gothamist is really psyched to check out Dirty on Purpose tomorrow night (details below). Their sound gets endlessly compared to Yo La Tengo and we've been listening to their EP for a while now, but haven't had a chance to catch them live just yet. On any given Sunday we like to scroll over to their song Mind Blindness on our iPod and go walk around a quieter area of downtown...the perfect weekend soundtrack.......

Oh, R. Kelly. Isn't being charged with unlawful sex with a minor enough of a reason to be suspicious of you? Now you have to compare yourself to Osama bin Laden in Blender magazine: "People can say whatever they want about you without knowing the facts. They can criticize you without even knowing you, and hate you when they don't even know you. All of a sudden, you're, like, the bin Laden of America. Osama......

The trailer for Mel Gibson's new movie about the last hours of Christ's life is up and it is a downer - very bloody and spooky. James Caviezel, who is a notably vocal Catholic (he didn't want to do a nude scene with Jennifer Lopez in Angel Eyes), stars as Christ and the entire movie is in Aramaic. Aramaic! There's been fuss over this movie since Mel Gibson decided this should be his directorial followup......